The Shepherd's Calendar

“ Most modern calendars mar the sweet simplicity of our lives by reminding us that each day that passes is the anniversary of some perfectly uninteresting event. Their compilers display a degraded passion for chronicling small beer, and rake out the dust-heap of history in an ardent search after rubbish. Mr. Walter Scott, however, has made a new departure and has published a calendar in which every day of the year is made beautiful for us by means of an elegant extract from the poems of Mr. Alfred Austin. ”

“ Dominical Letter.—The first problem which the construction of the calendar presents is to connect the week with the year, or to find the day of the week corresponding to a given day of any year of the era. As the number of days in the week and the number in the year are prime to one another, two successive years cannot begin with the same day; for if a common year begins, for example, with Sunday, the following year will begin with Monday, and if a leap year begins with Sunday, the year following will begin with Tuesday. ”

“ He called it the Gregorian Calendar; but there are lots of other calendars besides—there's the Jewish and Mohammedan, and a variety of calendars in the East. All of them can't be right. The result is that none of them are right, and the world is in confusion. Some calendars mark off too many days, others mark off too few. Half the world is ahead of Time, and the other half behind it. ”

“ A thing made up of the elements must be affected by their various changes and convulsions; and so the body assuredly is. When I was a shepherd, and all the comforts of my life depended so much on good or bad weather, the first thing I did every morning was strictly to overhaul the dreams of the night ”

“ It is to be regretted that the reverend fathers who formed the council of Nicaea did not abandon the moon altogether, and appoint the first or second Sunday of April for the celebration of the Easter festival. The ecclesiastical calendar would in that case have possessed all the simplicity and uniformity of the civil calendar, which only requires the adjustment of the civil to the solar year ”

“ By the new calendar the year of 365 days was divided into twelve months of thirty days each, every month being divided into three periods of ten days, each of which were called décades, and the tenth, or last, day of each decade being a day of rest. ”

“ The systematising tendency which arose at the end of the kingdom of Judah, and became ever stronger during and after the Exile, necessitated a calendar. If this tendency was unrelated to practical life, it was all the more closely bound up with the religious cult. Since people were now accustomed to numbering the months, the novelty consisted in the fixing of a calendarial beginning of the year. ”

“ The days marked in the calendars are those of the saints’ deaths (vid. ante, p. 213) ; but the days on which their relics were translated to some particular church are also marked as festivals in the calendar of the church in question. When in different calendars different days are given to the same saint, the date in the calendar belonging to the church where he died [347] is usually to be regarded as the day of his death; the others are days on which his relics were translated. ”

“ The mother counts by weeks—very good—the squire by the proper calendar. One makes the child three months and two weeks, and she is right; the other deducts eleven days to fit the calendar, and he, too, is right.”
“Out with it,” cried Caleb; “out with such a calendar! Why, the whole realm will be in confusion. None of us will ever know how old we are, or when the church-days are due; but I doubt if, in spite of it all, the Pope’s new calendar doesn’t keep the squire’s rent-day straight. They’ll look out for that.” ”

“ There can be no doubt that when there was an absence of all civilisation and a calendar of any sort was unknown, the year meant simply the succession of seasons, and that no attempt would be made to reckon any day as its commencement. ”

“ Holiday is a corruption of Holy Day, or a day originally set apart by the Roman Catholic Church for the celebration of some feast in commemoration of an important event, or in honour of a particular saint. The word Almanac, also written Almanack, is derived from the Arabic al manah, to count; whereas Calendar is a contraction of the Latin calendarium, an account-book. ”

“ POPULAR MONTHS OF THE EUROPEAN PEOPLES. In ancient times, and even at the present day in lands which lie outside the path of the great leveller, civilisation, the months taken over with the Roman calendar are not numbered divisions of the year, the names of which are a matter of indifference, but are concretely conceived and named as seasons. They are, in fact, nothing but seasons, the number and duration of which are determined by the conventional calendar. ”

“ Again it should be borne in mind that the Pope was a churchman and wished to abide by the decision of that council in celebrating the festival of Easter, so he drops the ten days and restores the vernal equinox to the 21st of March, its date at the meeting of the Council of Nice in 325, the date by which Easter day was determined. He not only made the correction, but he so reformed the calendar that the solar and the civil year are now made to coincide very nearly. ”

“ These documents are all dated in such and such a month of such and such a year of some king’s reign; the months are the same (at first under their earlier Accadian names [3] ) as those we [5] find in the almanacs translated by Epping and Strassmaier, and we meet in them, and in other historical inscriptions, with the intercalary months, the second Elul, and the second Adar. It would seem, then, that it was the same calendar, worked in the same way, that held its place through these two thousand years. ”

“ In consequence of the solar and lunar equations, it is evident that the epact, or moon's age at the beginning of the year, must, in the course of centuries, have all different values from one to thirty inclusive, corresponding to the days in a full lunar month. Hence, for the construction of a perpetual calendar, there must be thirty different sets or lines of epacts. ”

“ The only calendar we men have is a calendar of dates, fitted to the movements of the sun and moon. God has a calendar, too, but it is a calendar of events, not of dates. The completion of His plans doesn't depend on so many revolutions of the earth about the sun, but on the faithful revolution of His followers in their movement around the earth telling men of Jesus. ”

“ According to the rule which obtained in later times and continued in use until the Gregorian reformation of the Calendar, the 14th day of the Ecclesiastical Moon took place on Saturday the 22nd, which would make Easter-day happen on the 23rd. ”

“ As to the New Calendar, we may say here rather than elsewhere that speculative men have long been struck with the inequalities and incongruities of the Old Calendar; that a New one has long been as good as determined on. ”

“ Meyer has specially pointed out, must have begun to run its course in a year in which the rising of Sirius and New Year’s Day coincided, i. e. it began with a Sothic period.
The months within each season are numbered from I to IV. Among primitive peoples it frequently happens that a season gives its name to two months, which are distinguished as the first and second, but a numbering such as that of the Egyptian calendar is unexampled and shews once more a desire to get away from the moon-month. The so-called ‘months’ are rather subdivisions of the seasons. ”

“ For the dates of our Lady’s feasts, viewed in their chronological order, overlap the limits of the year, and being subject to the same principles which regulate saints’ days, fall invariably on fixed days in the Calendar, and so cannot be said to form an integral part of the ecclesiastical year. Nevertheless they form in themselves a cycle of festivals, as is also the case in a lesser degree with regard to St John the Baptist. ”

“ Only once in history have the measures of the ancient calendar been set aside. That was in France at the time of the Revolution, when the French people, in their passionate hatred of all the traditional things that reminded them of their past sufferings, invented a new calendar, in which they changed the names of months and days, and counted the years from 1792, the first of their liberty. ”

“ If, then, it should appear that these races possessed and incorporated into their mythologies a knowledge of the Zodiac, and of the first degree of Aries as its initial point, their separation from the parent stock must have been subsequent to the formation of the scheme that dealt with a calendar based on an observation of the colure of the winter solstice at that point, and under this supposition the date of 6,000 B.C. becomes a foothold for the chronology of ancient history. ”

“ Use a Christmas card for an outside cover and through the two top corners of the calendar make round holes large enough to allow a silken cord, matching in color the tint of the paper, to pass through. Then fasten all the pieces of the calendar together in order, January being the first and December the last (Fig. 159) . 82As each month passes by slide that leaf back on the cords, bringing after January, for instance, February to view. Hold the two loops of cord together at the top and hang the calendar where it may be readily seen.
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“ Year—If the civil year correspond with the solar the seasons of the year will always come at the same period. But if the civil year is supposed to be too long (as is the case in the Julian year) the seasons will go back proportionately; but if too short they will advance in the same proportion. Now, as the ancient Egyptians reckoned thirty days to the month invariably, and to complete the year, added five days, called supplementary days, their year consisted of 365 days. ”

“ Though confounded with calendar, it is essentially different—the latter relating to time in general, and the almanac to that of a year; but the term calendar can be properly used for a particular year. (See Ephemeris.)
ALMATH [Hamal] . The star in Aries whence the first mansion of the moon takes its name. ”

“ The Fasti of Ovid give an idea of the manner in which the Roman Calendar brought the ceremonial of religion to bear upon the course of life. For some centuries an acquaintance with the Calendar was the exclusive property of the sacred order [525] ”

“ The same is the case with the knowledge of the revolutions of the spheres, of which the yearly calendar is but one fruit. The excellence of the calculation of the calendar is famous, and it is well known what deep root it has taken among these people, few in number, yet excellently equipped with model institutions. Could it be otherwise? On account of the smallness, humbleness, and dispersion of the people it is hardly noticed among the other nations, yet those relics of the Divine made it into one firmly established organization. ”

“ Until 304 B.C. the lore of the calendaria remained the exclusive and lucrative monopoly of the priesthood; but in that year Gnaeus Flavius, a pontifical secretary, introduced the custom of publishing in the forum tables containing the requisite information, besides brief references to victories, triumphs, prodigies, &c. This list was the origin of the public Roman calendar, in which the days were divided into weeks of eight days each, and indicated by the letters A-H. Each day was marked by a certain letter to show its nature ”

“ Yet a word may be said to advantage concerning the omitted portion of the calendar. It is well for Americans to bear in mind that in this country to-day the days of the calendar are not nearly so familiar to the people at large as they are to Englishmen. New Year's Day, St. Valentine's Day, Easter, the Fourth of July, and a score of others would be known to every school child; yet many a person of education might pause over the location of Epiphany, or even Shrove-Tuesday, and how often would a book of names be called to the assistance when it is a question of St. ”

“ NOTWITHSTANDING the fact that in the history of every nation, especially such as has ever attained to an established form of government, the calendar is a matter of great importance, the Scriptures do not in any manner treat of the Jewish calendar. There cannot even be found a fixed time whence the commencement of the year should be reckoned, although there is this passage in Exodus (xii. 2) : "This month shall be unto you the chief of months: the first shall it be unto you of the months of the year." ”

“ For they are the most intelligent and learned men of the tribe, and moreover the calendar is peculiarly their affair, if the development has proceeded so far that value is attached to the calendar for the selection of the proper days for the religious observances. ”

“ Experience, and to a certain extent tradition, are their only guides for telling the different seasons of the year; they have not the slightest remembrance of their ancient calendar system. They are accustomed to hear clocks strike where such exist, but otherwise, simply from the course of the sun, moon, and stars, they are able to regulate the hours of the day and night, more or less. ”

“ The ordinary clocks show time by the mean, not the real, sun: and it was always laid down that Easter depends on the opposition (or full moon) of the mean sun and moon, not of the real ones. Thus we see that, were the Calendar ever so correct as to the mean moon, it would be occasionally false as to the true one: if, for instance, the opposition of the mean sun and moon took place at one second before midnight, and that of the real bodies only two seconds afterwards, the calendar day of full moon would be one day before that of the common almanacs. ”

“ Although it embodied the results of long-standing primitive astronomical observation and accorded with the seasons and movements of the celestial bodies, the native Calendar was primarily a governmental institution, designed to control the actions of human beings and bring their communal life in accord with the periodical movements of the heavenly bodies. ”